A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanitanova #2-25: Mined track. RFI shifts responsibility to railway workers (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

It took just over six months since the new organizational model of the 
railway maintenance sector came into force, based on an agreement 
between RFI- Rete Ferroviaria Italiana and the confederal unions, for 
many of the problems and critical issues reported by workers to surface 
in all their drama. It is enough to reread the articles that this 
newspaper has dedicated to the topic to realize how what is happening 
was easily predictable and how the criticisms and complaints made by 
workers have been ignored. If they had been listened to and not 
scientifically and prejudicially ignored, they could have avoided or at 
least mitigated some problems.

It is useless to reiterate here the repercussions that the new 
organization has had on the private lives of railway workers, completely 
cancelled out due to shifts continually moved with minimal notice; on 
their health, "thanks" to schedules that do not allow adequate rest and 
to an organization that is, to say the least, improvised; on the safety 
of maintenance workers, suffice it to say that accidents at work have 
increased by twenty percent. These are facts that are clearly negligible 
for those who signed this agreement which, for the sake of truth, 
included among its objectives, it is worth remembering, the: 
"reconciliation of life and work times" and "an organization (...) in 
compliance with safety at work", aspects that were completely 
disregarded without, however, always to refer to the agreement in 
question, in exchange for the slightest glimpse of the declared 
increases in the levels of preventive maintenance or the internalization 
of activities currently outsourced.

In recent weeks we have witnessed a whole series of breakdowns, 
anomalies and accidents that have created enormous inconvenience to rail 
traffic with heavy delays, cancellations of trains and considerable 
inconvenience for all passengers who have found themselves unable to use 
an essential service such as mobility. The maintenance workers, who have 
always been well aware of the consequences that this new model would 
have also brought about in terms of efficiency of the service provided, 
have continuously reiterated the impossibility of carrying out adequate 
maintenance due to the working conditions that this new organization 
establishes, denouncing the consequences in terms of breakdowns that all 
this would have brought about, it is enough to quote what was written in 
this newspaper last October (UN 30/24): "Paradoxically then (...) this 
organization (...) is absolutely not functional even from a corporate 
point of view, cyclical maintenance, which in fact prevents accidents 
and breakdowns, is practically zero (...) the inconveniences to 
circulation and the significant delays of this last period risk being 
only a first warning of what could happen soon".

How did RFI, and in general the FS group, react to this situation? 
Perhaps admitting the inadequacy of the new organization or at least its 
too hasty implementation and trying to recalibrate the maintenance 
model, attempting to restore a more liveable situation for workers and 
at the same time trying to safeguard and restore the minimum levels of 
safety and efficiency of circulation? Obviously not. Instead, he opted 
for a new and at the same time old strategy, artfully creating a 
conspiracy theory to mask his own failures and his own culpable 
shortcomings. Here then is the sabotage hypothesis: shady individuals 
who wander along the railway lines with screwdrivers, bicycle chains, 
hammers, nails and bottles and who undermine the safety of the railway 
infrastructure causing, or risking causing, damage, anomalies, 
breakdowns, accidents and consequent delays; shady individuals who, it 
is implied but sometimes even openly declared, would be the railway 
workers themselves. The laughability of the accusation is quite evident 
and a few considerations would be enough to demonstrate its absurdity; 
we mention two of the many that we could state. First, if the FS group 
believed that there was a well-founded or even remotely probable risk of 
sabotage to the infrastructure, it should not allow trains to circulate 
with the risk of accidents and damage to passengers; second, if it 
considered the possibility that the maintenance workers themselves were 
undermining the safety of the railway lines to be real, why would it 
have arranged shifts to be present in locations considered strategic by 
the potential damagers themselves?   Beyond the comic nature of the 
accusation, and in general of the whole hypothesis, what is truly 
serious and disconcerting is the fact that this theorem has gone from 
being one of the many extemporaneous and improvised declarations on the 
subject, - just think of the proposal to reduce the number of trains to 
be run as a solution to reduce accidents or the "explanation" that sees 
the longitudinal limitations of the Italian territory among the causes 
of the continuous inconveniences - to a real hypothesis, complete with a 
complaint from the company's top management to the Digos and subsequent 
investigations to ascertain the plausibility of the complaint: an act 
that implies a whole series of disturbing consequences. With this move, 
the company protects itself against all possible accidents, delays or 
breakdowns that from now on will no longer be considered as a direct 
consequence of the ineffectiveness of the new organizational model, but 
exclusively of the "sabotage" to which the infrastructure will be 
subjected. All the responsibility will be placed on a scapegoat, thus 
masking the structural shortcomings and the impossibility of providing 
an adequate, efficient and safe service and at the same time relieving 
the promoters of this recent project of any blame or criticism. 
Furthermore, any dissenting internal voice will be silenced: any 
objection addressed to the company will be considered as an "apology for 
crime", a tacit consent to actions aimed at damaging circulation, in an 
increasingly authoritarian climate where censorship will become the 
norm. It is a climate that the company had already put in place, 
punishing with disciplinary sanctions, fines and suspensions those who 
had not shown themselves to be in line, but which from now on will be 
even more stringent and exasperated; and we can already hear the 
distant, but not too distant, echo of the measures with which FS, in 
1923, purged a whole series of unwanted employees, anarchists, 
maximalists and communists.

Another aspect to consider is the one related to the "peace of mind" of 
the maintenance workers in carrying out their activities: like all those 
who work, in fact, they are not infallible and are subject to errors, 
which from now on will however be studied with a magnifying glass to 
understand if there could have been malice. In short, there will no 
longer be "simple" errors, but only hypotheses of crime; each operator 
will have to live with the sword of Damocles hanging over their head, in 
a toxic and highly stressful climate that will undermine their 
efficiency and lead them to be increasingly subject to making mistakes 
in a never-ending vicious circle.

Finally, an "enemy" responsible for the poor service, delays and 
cancellations is thrown to the vast audience of travellers and those who 
use the services of the FS group, an enemy who has no qualms about 
putting everyone in danger to achieve his goals and who does not care 
about the inconveniences to which users are subjected; a feeling of 
rancor and outright resentment is artfully created in public opinion 
towards those who fight, at the same time, both for their rights and to 
guarantee a safe and efficient service. An attempt is made to create an 
"enemy" in an attempt to divert attention from those truly responsible 
for the situation, who can thus continue, calmly and without being 
disturbed, to implement their plans, appearing moreover as the only ones 
truly concerned with guaranteeing users and protecting them from those 
who want to deny them the right to mobility.

A necessary reflection must then be made on the behavior of the mass 
media regarding the subject and on how they have generally addressed the 
issue: the media, in the majority of cases, have never, at any time, 
questioned the hypothesis of sabotage, making it more and more credible 
with unlikely footage fished out who knows where, highlighting foreign 
objects along the railway lines, without ever examining the news in 
depth, consulting the workers, without carrying out any kind of 
journalistic investigation, but only and exclusively providing a 
distorted and convenient, often scandalous and scandalized image of what 
happened. For example, they have omitted to say, just to mention a 
single fact, how the railway lines are not closed and that anyone can 
easily access them and throw waste of any kind; or how very often it is 
atmospheric agents that transport material onto the tracks and the 
overhead line, something that has always happened, and that only the 
constant presence and readiness of those who work there has often 
prevented mix-ups and anomalies. Newspapers and TV have tried to ride 
the news, without addressing or delving into the issues in question or 
developing a critical reasoning, exploiting the event without providing 
clarity, without listening to the opinions and testimonies of those 
directly involved, producing reports and articles that oscillate between 
the worst level of gossip and a tutorial on how to damage railway 
companies. Even in this case, as is now a consolidated habit, they ride 
the moment, they sell the news as a commodity, they try, in the classic 
"divide and conquer" style, to fragment the working class into 
watertight sectors and compartments to create divisions and conflicts, 
jealousies and misunderstandings, prevent a common action that alone 
could call into question the power and hegemony of a ruling class that 
pursues its objectives on the skin, and on the corpses, of those who work.

A final consideration must be made on the behavior of the unions in the 
specific case discussed. In the face of statements from corporate and 
government leaders about the possibility of sabotage by workers, serious 
statements, damaging to the reputation of an entire category and, as we 
have tried to underline, dangerous and insidious, the response of the 
trade unions, especially the confederal ones, has been completely 
insufficient. While on the one hand the grassroots unions have rushed to 
denounce the incident with press releases and so on, siding with the 
maintenance workers and reiterating the responsibilities of the January 
10 agreement, on the other hand the response of the confederal acronyms, 
which also in terms of media resonance would have had a completely 
different value, has been rather timid, albeit with some exceptions. The 
reason seems simple enough: despite pressure from members to back out of 
the agreement, the national unions have no intention, at least for now, 
of going back, implicitly admitting the failure of the new 
organizational model and consequently declaring its end, or in any case 
acknowledging the current impossibility of implementing it, and 
postponing its possible execution until the minimum conditions necessary 
for its sustainability are present.

We know well how, in a completely different context and moment, unproven 
theorems, unfounded hypotheses and attempts at misdirection led the 
railway worker, train conductor, Giuseppe Pinelli to "commit suicide". 
The lessons of history are unfortunately too often ignored and forgotten.

If we wanted to play at being conspiracy theorists for a moment, we 
could venture an absurd hypothesis: could all these breakdowns and 
accidents caused by the new organization serve to demonstrate the 
inefficiency and unprofitability of the maintenance system and not be 
aimed at a possible privatization?

German

https://umanitanova.org/binario-minato-rfi-scarica-le-responsabilita-sui-ferrovieri/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en